2025-2026 Academic Catalog 
    
    Aug 02, 2025  
2025-2026 Academic Catalog

Sociology, B.A.


Degree Planning Sheet

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Degree Planning Sheet with Full-Time Sample Course Plan  

This sample plan represents a full-time pace. Part-time options are available; please connect with the recruitment team to learn more.

 

The Sociology curriculum provides students with an understanding of the guiding sociological principles that influence human relationships in a complex society. The sociology program emphasizes applied, career-related experiences and an understanding of the pressing social issues and concerns of modern society. The curriculum is further molded by a desire to foster social awareness and a strong sense of civic and community responsibility.

 

Program Mission

The Mission of the Sociology program at Maryville University is to cultivate students’ sociological imagination, providing theoretical, methodological, and analytical skills to examine social structures, inequality, and interaction. Through critical thinking and empirical inquiry, graduates are prepared for diverse careers and advanced study.

Consistent with this mission, the Sociology program is committed to the following goals:  (Based on The Sociology Major in the Changing Landscape of Higher Education: Curriculum, Careers, and Online Learning; https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/asa-booklet-2017.pdf)

  1. Sociology students will delineate the major theoretical frameworks and distinctive concepts and assumptions upon which the discipline is grounded and apply them to understanding social life.
  2. Students of sociology will describe social structure and how structural forces affect human action and social life at the micro, meso, and macro levels of society.
  3. Students of sociology will explain the relationship between the self and society, particularly how the self is socially constructed through socialization and maintained at multiple levels of society.
  4. Students of sociology will describe the essential concept of social stratification, recognizing its different forms and the processes of its establishment (race, social class, gender, and other social factors).
  5. Sociology students will identify the social processes underpinning social change and its consequences for individuals and social structures.
  6. Sociology students will describe the role of social research methods in building sociological knowledge, identifying the major methodological approaches and the design elements of social research (sampling, measurement, data collection and analysis).
  7. Students of sociology will demonstrate their ability to use their sociological knowledge to inform policy debates and promote public understanding of the social issues of their times in written, visual, and oral forms when participating in civic life.
  8. Sociology students will demonstrate an understanding of the kinds of work sociologists do, including an awareness of how sociology is used in clinical and applied settings.

 

Disclaimer: The program requirements outlined in this catalog are applicable only to students who enroll in this degree program at the university during the academic year specified in this catalog.  Please be aware that program requirements and offerings are subject to change in future academic years. Dual-enrolled students are not admitted to a degree program, but upon admission to a degree program, they will follow the degree requirements that align with their start term.

MCORE


(36 credits)

Social Discovery


Courses in this area will focus on the study of human behavior, its ethical and moral dimension, human societies, the requirements of civility, and social science theory and practice which undergirds such study.

(6 credits)

Civic Discovery


Courses in this area will focus on the study and purpose of human institutions and systems, the historical and contemporary forms of power, authority, governance and citizenship, and the distribution and use of resources.

(6 credits)

Cultural Discovery


Courses in this area will focus on significant systems of thought, contributions made by significant historical and cultural figures, philosophical and historical movements, and ideas which have shaped history, culture and human institutions.

(6 credits)

Creative Discovery


Courses in this area will focus on the nature of the creative imagination, the philosophical underpinnings of human creativity in music, the visual arts, the narrative arts, and philosophical invention, and innovation in a variety of human endeavors.

(9 credits)

Scientific Discovery


Courses in this area will focus on the nature of scientific reasoning, the history and variety of the scientific endeavor in culture, and the nature of scientific process and exploration.

(9 credits)

Major Requirements


(45 credits)

Graduation Requirements - MCORE


  • 120 credit hours minimum
  • Last 30 hours of the degree taken in residency
  • A minimum of half the major credit hours in residency
  • A minimum of half the minor credit hours in residency
  • ​60 credit hours must be completed at a 4-year institution